Alice Hoffman ditches her fluffy bestsellers for the gritty story of four women present at the mass suicide of Masada in AD73

T
his is an ambitious historical work by an author hitherto known for her
intelligent, enjoyable but not overly taxing bestsellers. A few of Alice
Hoffman’s previous novels, such as Practical Magic (1996) — made into a film
starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock — have been snapped up by
­Hollywood. She is a mainstay on Oprah book club lists. Swathes of
discerning middle-aged women on both sides of the Atlantic, and beyond,
worship regularly at her book signings and appearances at literary
festivals. Hoffman is, however, reaching for something more heavyweight here.

The Dovekeepers is an imagining of the mass suicide of Jews at Masada, in
ancient Israel, in AD73. It is either an unbearable or a wonderful novel —
depending largely on your tolerance for its pseudo-biblical style. Here is a
fairly typical sentence: “My mother took two doves from their nest that were
so beautiful they themselves knew of their own